Bird Cage
by Digital Senshi Sailor Who
Summary: They destroyed each others' lives, but Selena and Van have come to terms. Can they forget the past? Spoilers, angst, yaoi (non-explicit, for god's sake!)...
1. In Conflict With Water

I, um, do not own the copyright to Escaflowne. You knew that.

I wanted to write a continuation fic, but not a typical one. I realize that Van and Selena falling in love is nearly as cliche as Hitomi returning to save Gaea from a new great evil, but bear with me. It will be worth it, if you can stand the overwhelming angst of it all, and a lot of overbearing dialogue. There is going to be extremely little development of actual plot in this (as with practically everything I write), and more delving into the actual characters.

I don't know how often I'll update this. I'm currently working on a lot of projects (short attention span), and I want to get this done with quickly before I stop caring and neglect it. If you're wondering why all of my other fics are oneshots, that would be the reason. Anyway, I'm sorry to babble so much, and on with the story!

* * *

She walked on the horizon of the setting sun, the last dying rays beneath her feet, shining through her filmy dress to silhouette her thighs, her face a profile against the red of sky and heart. It was painfully clear to him how beautiful she was then, hair engaged in the brisk winds of this valley, dress blown back with modest yet complete abandon, toes arched stiff against the rail of the bridge as she took perfectly precise steps along the way. She never faltered, which put him ill at ease; her eerie solidarity let him know that she could not possibly be, not really, the girl her brother claimed she was.

He saw the creature in her that he'd feared, since Allen Schezar's sister arrived, would manifest itself in her form. Those elegant eyes burned somewhere out of normal view, somewhere the naked retina strained to venture but Van Fanel's careful scientific observation revealed. And she was beautiful.

"Selena," he said, wooden as the plank she balanced upon.

She looked at him, eyes transparent to reveal the spectacle of burning sky behind her, or was that in his imagination? She blinked, killing the day to start a fresh era anew, and her eyes were clear once more, smooth as moon. "My brother sent you for me."

She did not sound like him.

"Allen's been worried about you."

"I won't get lost." Delicately, gingerly, she perched upon the rail, lowering herself to a seated position with perfect composure. The stream sparkled beneath her, clear enough to reveal the smooth stones of cool hues beneath, mirroring the advancing night. He thought he saw the stars in them where the broken reflection of her white skin played upon the surface of the rocks. Even now, as she was, the vessel of Dilandau Albatou was incompatible with water.

Van said nothing in reply. The moons were beginning to rise, behind them, bringing with it the habitual night-time whispers that haunted his mind, back at first then prominent in the forefront. He managed to forget, in daylight, as if the heat of the Fanelian sun upon the reconstruction burned all memory of the green-eyed girl away; when the chill of a valley night returned, the cycle began again to wreak havoc on his senses. Selena was beautiful, but with none of the mysterious allure of the Phantom Moon.

She saw him staring at it, and she laughed, not his laugh. "You still love her?" Merely an assenting grunt answered her, and Selena observed, unsympathetically, "She's all that Allen talks about. I can't imagine what was so wonderful about her that everyone fell for."

"It's because she was kind to everyone. Even Folken, when none of us dared to trust him but her. She was amazing." He leaned back upon the railing nearby her, still looking up at the face of the Earth. Green land for eyes, downy clouds for hair, water for substance, fluid, like Hitomi's compassion.

"She was, she did, and only good words to impart. You talk about her as if she'd died." Another laugh, and this one was his. "You may never see her again, but at least she's not dead." The gaze of Selena Schezar cut him levelly, straight through him with those dangerous eyes, her monotonous voice disturbing in the absence of vocal sorrow. "My fifteen boys really are gone. Though, to be fair, you didn't slaughter Miguel with the rest of them."

"You remember that?" Allen was always unclear about if she remembered anything before her reappearance, and insistent on the reality that his sister was not the same person the Captain of the Dragon Slayers had been, and that she never would be. That distortion of fact had been the reason Van agreed to allow Selena's presence in his nation, though he was uncertain about the danger to both of them should she still retain the slightest portion of Dilandau's essence.

"As well as I remember what you did to my face," she sighed, tiredly. "But the mark is gone now, and the scar would have faded even on the skin of that other destiny." A white-gloved finger delicately traced the familiar line of demarcation on the inner map of self-image; he'd spent hours gazing into mirrors, at glasses of wine, at anything which could reflect real and imagined flaws back to his carnation eyes, running gloved hands over the pattern, surely. Temple to jaw, temple to jaw, red and livid. Repeat.

"Do you still hate me?"

She surprised him by smiling as if at a jibe, carefully enunciating the single word, "No."

"Why not?"

Selena carefully stepped down, standing level beside him, their eyes at matching height. "I've changed since then. It was war, and that's what happens during a war. People kill other people and nations fall. Your nation fell, my people died. It was all either one of us could do. I realized that after Allen told me his censored version of the story. We both had responsibilities and our own loyalties. It hurts, but we weren't in control of it. Our fates were being tinkered with, besides."

Gooseflesh was rising on her skin, small inconsistencies appearing in her deceptively smooth flesh, and Van knew that it was not because of the dusk chill. Dilandau would never have allowed himself to shiver or flinch. "Allen said you didn't remember when you were...him. Allen thinks you and he are two completely different people. But you don't talk like that."

"I am not Dilandau anymore. Dilandau was deluded. Dilandau was vain. Dilandau believed in causes worth fighting for, even when they weren't. Dilandau could bear a difficult and solitary life. I'm disillusioned, need my brother to support me, and don't believe in anything anymore. I'm not Dilandau, but sometimes I wish I were."

"But you're the same person," Van stated.

"In the way you mean it, yes, I'm the same person. I've always remembered everything, but when the sorcerers' control on me began to loose hold, I was very confused and couldn't tell up from down, past from present. I couldn't explain my past to Allen at first if I tried, and I wasn't even sure where I was or what was happening. I was...scared."

He risked a glance in her direction again, and the sun was nearly gone, only a sliver of light illuminating the separate wild strands of blonde hair carried away freely in the cold breeze. "Why don't you tell Allen?"

"I let him believe what he wants to about me. It's easier for both of us if I can just start my life fresh, with him, as Selena. I made mistakes, but I regret them all. I don't want to be remembered for them, except, maybe, by you... I deserve that."

Van could think of no way to reply to her, though he wanted to protest. Her voice was flat, but the water in her narrowed eyes didn't lie. She wasn't made of the same substance as Dilandau anymore, couldn't be, because any tear that boy might cry would dry and sizzle before it left the fount. There was no source for water in his perpetual burning passions, but something had extinguished him and only this lost girl remained. Something was left of his obstinance in her, it seemed, for she did not cry. The tears in her eyes were only a reflection of the current she gazed upon beneath herself, a part of her she would not give up.

He did not need to think of a response, because Allen stumbled upon them, and fussing over the sister he didn't know, led Selena away. Van followed, curious, content to leave conversation to persons other than himself as they approached the palace.

"Selena, you know I worry when you wander off that way. Please let me keep you safe. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I lost you a second time."

She smiled, sadly, face framed by the oppression of the invading night, and she allowed him to coddle her for the sake of his chivalrous sanity. No words passed through those rosy lips, but instead remained trapped inside the cage of her gaze, fluttering and twittering but drained of energy and will; Allen could never look in the angle necessary to catch a glimpse of the emotion that struggled and died there.

Van could.

She glanced at him tiredly, too worn away and eroded to be vindictive, and looked away, serene, soft, and utterly silent.


	2. Fifteen Dolls

Same disclaimers as always.

Thanks bunches to those of you who've reviewed this, or anything else I've posted. It really makes my day to know someone enjoys what I do. ^_^ I lurve you all. *violent collective glomp* I'll try to update this every day until whenever I decide it's done. (You think I know where my stories are going better than you do? Hah!) However, I also have an original story I'm trying to make myself finish, and plenty of school-related stuff even though it's summer. Sigh.

I'm sorry that things are moving so slowly, but I've always been terrible at pacing. I hope that moving between the story and the past aren't confusing; I hate to write "he _had_ done this, _had_ done that" over and over.

* * *

She never speaks to anyone. Her mouth stays closed, her eyes open, a smile sometimes crossing her pretty face to show her patronizing assent to anyone who dares presume he knows what is best for her. She likes to take walks with bare feet, feeling the grit and dirt she can never leave behind herself, letting her soul show through only on her soles, the root where men fear to glance or tread for fear and shame of what they know is there. The mud and dust that cling can be washed away, and she can be forced to wear shoes once she has been rediscovered and suppressed.

She always wears white, like an ethereal, sickly angel, a draconian, a being from a lost city long dead and still but recently disturbed for the sake of man's need to domineer the uncontrollable fate of himself and those whose destinies concern him, for better or for worse.

She was the swept-up cobwebs and the brushed-away dust, all tidy hair, all clean face, all neat and nice with that essential element of passed time lacking, creating the overall visage of something lost and found, created and destroyed, beautiful to look at but not complete in person or presence.

And she spoke to Van Fanel.

Her eyes were blue, large and sad, though they had not always been that way. It seemed that fate, subverted or unmolested, had that much in store for her. Dilandau's eyes were lost forever, and these blue orbs she'd begun with were once more restored, her destiny re-directed to the life of a lonely little girl, all alone inside herself.

"She remembers me," Van told Allen.

The knight found that troubling, and inquired, "Are you certain?" His sister was no longer the monster Dilandau Albatou had been, and she would be the sweet girl he remembered now. All outward indication corroborated it.

"Yes, she told me so."

"Well, if Selena spoke to you at all, that must be a good sign. She hardly ever talks to anyone." Allen frowned as he spoke, uncertain of the good or ill indications of this development. "She only speaks if she wants, no, _needs_ something, usually. She does get into the mood to converse occasionally, but never with strangers."

"We're not strangers."

Allen considered it, turning the issue over in his mind. It seemed out of character, but who was he to dictate what her character was? She seemed to confuse herself more than she did anyone else, and no one was more perplexed than the brother who yearned to be her family. He loved her more than the world, more than the stars, more than any woman he'd ever desired, unconditionally, and he hardly knew who she really was. He didn't care.

"I'm glad she's opening up to someone," Allen finally sighed. "I was worried about keeping her here. But she needed to get away from Pallas. It smothered her. She begged me to take her somewhere far away, and with Selena, begging means absolute desperation. I couldn't keep her like that."

"I believe you." Van shook his head, sighing. "Another two bodies helping us rebuild is certainly appreciated. It's been months and we're still hardly off the ground."

Van said that, but it was obvious that he enjoyed Allen's presence for its own sake. The bonds forged by alliance in the war had only strengthened with time. Tension existed in their conflicting motives and ideologies, their incompatible loyalties and values, and their mutual, enduring love for the same woman, yes, but they were closely-bound rivals in those affairs, not mortal enemies as Dilandau and Van had been for many of the same reasons.

"I'd rather do honest work to help those who need it than waste away in Castelo Fort. Millerna's heart is in the right place, but she doesn't understand why I've decided to come straight here rather than guard the border from invisible phantoms." Gaddes, in addition, had been equally disappointed by Allen's decision to leave military life. Allen had languished years too many tied up by an Aston's bureaucracy before, and his sister's return gave him the supplemented strength to break free of the cycle chivalry in its traditional form had brought to him. He was following no man's conscience but his own.

"And Selena?"

Allen shrugged, tossing his bound hair over one shoulder, banishing the sweat from his brow with an already moist handkerchief. Even after a day of labor beneath the sneer of the sun, his appearance was more regal than Van's own. Dirt and sweat seemed to form the outer layer of his being, and still he managed to appear the most thoroughly civilized and stately man in the world, hair inexplicably neat and Asturian fashion smart. The heat of the Fanelian day did not allow him his usual full regalia, but he had never gone a day without his uniform in Castelo and he refused to sacrifice appearance for comfort now. The knight was a deeply principled man.

"Selena seemed excited enough about the idea. She's a kind girl. You might want to prepare yourself in case she brings home a sick dragon to nurse back to health."

Upon their return home, she superficially resumed childhood from where it had left off. Allen treated her to childish pleasures; gaimelef tournaments, dances, candy, jewelry, and toys. It began innocently enough. He found her staring, intently, eagerly at a beautiful china doll with long, straight blonde hair in a storefront one day. Her lack of speech and response to nearly everything led Allen to assume, with good cause, that she required the supervision that a five-year-old might, and he asked if she would like to have it.

She smiled, nodding a little, and he gave her the doll as a present to welcome her home. From that day onward, he could not resist the urge to lavish upon her anything she gave the slightest indication of desire for. His days brightened, as he saw things the way he imagined they must appear to her eyes; the vividness of color suddenly occurred to him, the slight but prickly feeling of the wind upon his face became a gale. He was supersensitive to everything around him that he'd never noticed before, because of her. Things he thought she'd like because they appeared so wonderful to him in his lucid delirium, he could not help but purchase as a gift.

On arriving home, she took the doll and disappeared into her room with it for several hours. He knocked on the door, softly, to rouse her from her retreat and eat supper, and when the door opened, she presented him with the doll, adorned in makeshift trousers cut from the cloth of her bedding and an unbecoming haircut. It made him grimace to see how she had ruined her expensive new toy so soon, but she seemed so thoroughly pleased with herself that he complimented her on the doll's new attire and informed her that she need only ask for a bit of fabric the next time she felt inclined to stich any loose edges together. She nodded, contemplatively.

Everything else that he bought her seemed to endure similar treatment. Her dolls all transformed from girl to boy in the space of a few hours after Selena brought them home, though she did so well at altering them that they looked every bit as beautiful as they had prior. After fifteen of the things, she decided that she needed no more dolls and gave a rare word instructing Allen to stop wasting his money on her.

He never could understand her desire to tinker with all the things that seemed the height of perfection when he first beheld them, but he could not hope to prevail against the passing of her fancy. He continued to search for things she would enjoy, and on the occasions when she accepted his gifts as they were, he rejoiced inwardly. She began to respond favorably in direct proportion to the acceleration of his frenzy, and he assumed that meant his understanding of her had been improving. She bore his eccentricities with patience.

She altered the dresses he bought her, taking up embroidery and doing very well at it for a beginner. Selena's interest in a decidedly feminine craft reassured Allen that her brief obsession with boyhood was no more than a passing phase, perhaps the last dying quivers of Dilandau's mark upon her soul.

One day, as she sewed, content to stay at the house while her brother went to the bazaar, she discovered amidst the flowers the body of an injured crow. By the time that Allen returned, she had fashioned for its wing a splint and made herself thoroughly muddy in pursuit of earth-dwelling flesh as means to sustain her wounded charge. As little as he approved, Allen could not possibly deny her the joy her pet brought her, and the crow stayed.

She adopted more fauna, bringing into the house any animal that needed care or struck her fancy. Before they left for Fanelia, she set them all free. In a whirl of feathers, in a flash of fur, in a gleam of teeth they were before her one moment, unsure of the direction their lives were taking, and then, at her insistence, they were gone. "They'd never survive away from their native home," she noted with a sigh. "I wonder why animals can't leave simple things behind, while people can."

"They can't, always," was all Allen could say in reply. "I could never move past the idea of you. Your disappearance still haunts me, and I have you back."

She'd smiled tightly, and shook her head. "I know."

That conversation was the longest, most insightful, and most jarring thread of communication the two of them might ever have. Certainly, Allen spoke to her, but she responded only in nods and smiles, pretending the role of a happy little girl that he was not always entirely sure she really was. He'd inquired, once, of her feelings toward him; was she full of hate, love, or ambivalent? She answered, "That's a silly question," with a smile.

Allen and Van, together, slipped through the crowds in silence, stealing from the chatter and the people surrounding. The all-encompassing chatter, the low level of noise right behind their ears, buzzing just behind the lobe with the tenacity of a lurking mosquito possessing maternal aspirations, did not fade when the masses did. The sound of laughter and of cheerful voices was a curious and unreverent backdrop to the quiet solitude of the yard behind the palace. The stillness of air and emptiness of man that place encompassed, when coupled with the whispers and voices of the people of Fanelia, made it seem that here were ghosts, here were monsters, here was the soul that collectively resided in the hearts of man.

You saw things there, Allen thought, casting his eyes around. You saw the faintest rustle of a leaf and it seemed to move in accordance to the invisible bodies of the dead. You saw the demon queen of this country wandering the wood where it began, where Van recollected his mother had walked when she left and she never returned. You saw the dragons sacrificed for the coronations of kings in the trees, yellow eyes peering out.

He saw her, next, hardly more substantial than the ghosts in his imagined vision projected. She was there. Her dress was black today, despite the heat, embroidered with flowers in red. The vines were like something alive, like licks of flame around the hem and snaking up her stomach to engulf her breasts in a full array of blossom. He glanced away, to where she was gazing.

She sat, dry-eyed, distant as when she had been with him in a cemetery that first time, upon the grave of the Strategos of Zaibach, the Crown Prince of Fanelia. Her eyes surveyed the letters, put them in order. She whispered, unlamenting, hardly mournful, "Folken Fanel."

Allen's initial reaction was anger that she was out alone, but he wrestled it into submission as he carefully controlled all aspects of his life. He'd mentioned to her, idly, in passing, that the body of Van's brother had been found, and that a funeral in full traditional fashion would be held in his honor. Surely, she must simply have been curious about this man after hearing Allen's description of his martyrdom. He walked up behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Why black?"

She did not look at him, boring at the headstone with her unrelenting, emotionless gaze. "You buy me so many dresses, but I hardly wear any them. I thought I should get some use out of the rest."

Van glanced at the grave with little more than disgusted pity. "Whenever I come out here, I wish that we were closer. I was little when he left, and I didn't want to get to know him when I learned he was still alive."

"He proved himself to be a good man, in the end," Allen offered, and he believed what he said. "It must have been difficult to help destroy something you believed in so passionately." He tenderly stroked his sister's shoulder, and informed in an unintentionally condescending tone, "Selena, we'll be having supper soon."

She nodded blankly. "You should change." A little smile tugged at the corner of her mouth; few ever saw Allen Schezar in a state of uncleanliness.

"You're right. I will. Stay close by Van." He kissed her cheek before he left.

She turned to look at the king, expression worn but not surprised. Van writhed awkwardly under her gaze, slicing straight through him in a manner all too familiar. "He's very protective," he observed, even someone as comfortable with silence as him unable to bear the quiet borne of unassuming tension. "Does he ever let you do anything?"

"Yes." She turned, with all the viscosity of stone, to stare back into his brother's engraved name. "But only with his approval and supervision. He doesn't want to lose me again. How did Folken die?"

Her lack of pretense and the abrupt change of subject threw him, hard. "You don't know?"

Selena's eyes narrowed, and she reached with soft fingers to touch the cold, unyielding proof of Folken's death. Tracing the name with feather-light contact, she minced, "I've heard lots of things. I don't know if they're true. You tell me what you know." Dilandau was shining through her now with stunning brilliance: her tone lowered, offering nothing to him unless he gave her something, no room within the limited range of pitch for negotiation. Absolutely militaristic. She claimed that part of her was dead, but even she must notice the easy way she slipped into that persona and how well it fit upon her.

"He died assassinating Dornkirk. Hitomi said his sword went right through the old man, broke, and flew back at him." He illustrated the scene elaborately with his hands, fully aware of how gruesome and impersonal he made it. Even after Folken's death, he couldn't bring himself to feel any kind of sympathy for his brother. He simply could not comprehend the man's motives.

"The Emperor should never have trusted a man who would betray his own country. He was bound to do it again. Any day. He never showed any emotion at all. All that pressure, kept inside. He was sure to snap." She released a volley of laughter that was not at all happy.

"That's not why he did it."

"I'm sure it wasn't. He let individuals get in the way of the majority. No war is deathless, and no society is without problems somewhere. He told me he was in with Zaibach to end the world's pain. I can't stand idealists."

"Allen is one."

She grimaced. "I know it. But I love him, even so. And, besides..." She hesitated, the heaviness of Dilandau's legacy lightening a bit, her eyes growing softer. She bit her lower lip, the pink flesh bending without resistance to the pressure of her smooth, white teeth. "He needs me."

She sighed, smoothing her skirts, standing upright, rigid as a soldier in a long line knowingly sent off in a final march to death, a proud and beautiful thing unafraid of the slaughter. She repeated it again, affirming it to herself, explaining yet again why, despite Allen's flaws, she cared.

"He needs me."


	3. His Cage

I've got to give a big thanks to everyone commenting. It's very encouraging. ^_^ (Except when I get lame reviews picking at my use of adverbs because it's the only "flaw" someone can find to insult me with when they don't like my style. That's pointless and obnoxious.)

I know this chapter's short. I'll post another longer one later today if I can, so it'll be worth it.

Disclaimers. I didn't create Escaflowne and therefore do not own it. I do, however, have a very nice boxed set.

* * *

Van found her interesting and good conversation, if what little rapport they had could be termed as such, so he began to seek her out in his free moments. They never discussed inconsequential things and did not make small talk, for neither of them were the type of person to bear for long the specter of social banter. They were both impatient.

It seemed that all the talk they did not engage in with others collected and accumulated, growing old and aging in their minds until it ripened to a careful deliberation which could be spoken only in the presence of one another. He told her things that he would not imagine imparting to anyone, and she listened patiently, uncomforting but also in no mind to criticize the phantoms that haunted him.

He saw Hitomi in everything, he told her. He remembered, acutely, every place she placed her hand, every aspect of ground she'd ever stood upon, and every object new or unfamiliar to her, and the delighted things she had to say about them. He would see the window of the room she'd stayed in upon first arrival in Fanelia from any vantage point in the city, his view a natural progression to the hallowed chamber from anywhere nearby he happened to glance. Though the palace had been razed and reborn--everything in the city had been--the sacred essence of her was miraculously unaffected by the flames, when everything else important to him had not possessed such fortune.

It was worse at night, when the moons rose and he would squint to differentiate, from all those unfamiliar countries, the one that Hitomi spoke of and pointed to so easily. It was as when Van and his brother used to name the stars together, with a unfamiliar world to condense into simple logic rather than the sky. She pointed out all those places, patiently, longingly, and even now he felt the same angry sting of realization that he had then: she would return and leave all this behind her, were the opportunity manifest. She was a practical person, and for all their love, he was only just so important.

Perhaps it was because he had no one else in the world that he allowed himself so dangerously close to the heart of another human being. His people were scattered, his home in ruins. The mysterious girl with strange powers was the sole force to ground him in his adrift state. Hitomi, in contrast, had friends and family in wait for her, and their sheer force of presence outweighed any importance the king of Fanelia held. Because she had others to divide her love amongst, it was never as intense as his indivisible own.

Selena would nod, and listen. Her lack of emotional response reassured him more than the pity his silent suffering elicited from others. While he spoke, she followed the movements and gestures of his hands to landmarks, emotional or corporeal, that he recalled.

She seldom talked concretely of the past, talking in hypotheticals and maybes. She told him, "My childhood alone would make you cringe." He believed her, but it was only natural that the way she skipped and skirted around the topic, fluttering away when he should have her netted, ensnared in his words, would provoke curiosity. Van was not the type to pry, however, and he said nothing of it, continuing instead to chronicle the tread of his own pain, choosing instead to tell her about the thorough mediocrity of his life.

When all the indescribable emotion Hitomi awoke in him had been recounted as well as he was able, he told her of other things. He told her of his family.

"You'd think, being a king, that your life would have been happier," Selena mused. "If even royalty can't buy happiness in this world, how are normal people supposed to find it?"

"I did find it. I can find it again."


	4. Her Scars

Disclaimers go here. I've chosen to relate Selena's memories referring to her as "she" even though she was Dilandau at the time. This is done for the sake of my sanity, so I don't confuse anyone else or myself. (Although I might have done just that.) Also, this chapter officially launches the _interesting_ part of the story, with a lot of bizarre plot twists, because I'm a twisted person. It'll all work out in the end. I think.

* * *

She never knew how it began.

One day, they were bitter enemies, opposites in every way, polar as the fiery sun and mournful moons, dawn and dusk. As cats were to dogs and ice to flame they existed, she always untouchably hot and he cool in his lack of visible emotion and stoic silence. They were the ultimate balance for one another, and the most perfect distillation of hate grew up between them.

The next, something happened, breaking down inside of her to match the mark inflicted on that flawlessness face. The cut went through her skin, extending into her pride and soul, scarring irrevocably the only part of her that hadn't been bruised before.

Her face had been her only untouched feature, able to attract both women and men, able to manipulate so well, able to win any fight with the bat of a long, luxurious eyelash. That was over now. Her face was ruined, one single slender scar extending down the length of it, making visible to the entire world the fractures in her facade.

It was because of Van that her flaws were now perceptible, that her insecurities and uncertainties and inabilities lay bare before everyone. He cut her up, and because he gutted her from the inside out--first fighting back against the unseen, escaping the flames of Fanelia, convincing Allen Schezar to hide him, then progressing to the point of no return and winning against the elite of Zaibach--because of that he'd already worried away at her core by the time he gashed the cheek open to reveal his masterpiece of carnage. It was intolerable.

Van had ruined her beautiful face, and how it throbbed.

She was sick for three of days afterward, from fever real or imagined, immobile and subject to every acute increase in pain, paced exactly to the time of her heart and movements of her breath. No sun shone on the Vione, and the passage of time was therefore indeterminate even under the best of conditions, so she knew not in her half-delirious state how time passed or what transpired.

She only knew the feeling of a cool left hand dutifully changing her bandages, soothing her hysteria, providing her sustenance, a dark voice singing softly songs for children that she had not the cognizance to protest. Under no obligation to do so, he stayed with her and cared for her until her senses returned and she threw him out of the room in a screaming fit.

It had begun in that period, at a point she could not distinguish from the rest of that blurred time. Something in her was grateful for the concern, and that opened way for a warmth that blossomed only when he was near or attentive. Being cared for was the most potent aphrodisiac Dilandau was misfortunate enough to stumble upon.

And Allen dared to ask why she wore black with red beginning and cascading into the dirt where her heart would be if Selena was any other person. She did not weep, because their relationship had never been defined in terms of tears or even more positive displays. Emotion was strictly disallowed. He was cold in his affections as she was scathing. It was business only, a routine (and didn't Dilandau know about routines) procedure to be performed because they both found it soothing, if only in private, away from one another.

She stole visits to the grave when she supposed no one would see her.

Proving his enduring ability to break her into bloody, emotive parts, Van met her there one night, and asked, "Why do you come here?"

She wondered the same all too often. "Is there anything wrong with visiting the grave of a fallen comrade?"

"You and Folken weren't comrades. You hated each other."

"We did no such thing. I knew him very well, even if we got along badly. Is that the answer you're looking for?"

"Were you friends?"

She nearly smiled at the irony of the question, and spat, "No. I told you, we never got along well. We hardly ever exchanged a word."

Van's expression made it clear that she'd puzzled him. Hesitantly, he asked what she knew he'd been lusting for an explanation to all along. "What happened to you in Zaibach?"

"Too much to possibly tell. I hardly understand half of it myself."

She never fathomed what she saw in him, but there was certainly something to be desired. When a word could be coaxed from him, he often proved to be comforting and intelligent, but he remained distant even then. Close to him, she felt something undefinable but glorious all the same, and it was addictive. It was impossible to deny or to fight the romantic lure he silently ignited, try as she might. And she did try. She needed no one before, and the sudden dependence on one man's elusive tolerance alienated her beyond expression.

She knew he only put up with her. She knew he did not feel the same.

She wouldn't let herself care.

Selena surveyed Van, tasting and probing him with her hungry eyes, searching for something touchable in him tonight. He seemed loathe to reveal himself this once. "You remind me of your brother." She left him with that.


	5. The Curse

Escaflowne _still_ isn't mine. My henchmen are working on that. I know this is moving fast, but you'll notice that the only reason Van does any of the things he does is because Selena reminds him of Hitomi, and the only reason Selena goes along with him is because he reminds her of Folken.

* * *

"Don't tell Allen about this. He wouldn't understand."

The Schezars seemed doomed to a life of repeating cycles by virtue of blood. It began long ago in the line and continued to this day.  It was something that could not be explained or combated, a circle of life and death that inevitably wove in everyone close to the unlucky inheritor of the noble lineage and destroyed them, individually. Leon would leave and return, explore and play father, alternately endear and alienate himself to his son. His death and the dissolution of a tenuously connected family was the result.

Allen, though he would never admit to any relation or passing similarity to the father he hated, was the same. All three of the heirs to the Aston throne fell in love with him, and he was their specific downfall, one by one. Every woman he ever loved was fated to die, to love another man, or both.  (Princess Elise was the exception: she languished in lieu of either less painful destiny.) His relation to women began with his mother and extended long into his adult life.

Selena, it seemed, had been in kind influenced by the curse afflicting the men of her family, the result of either Allen's interference or the madmen of Zaibach tampering with her natural fate. Selena, it could only be assumed, would follow the same path as her brother, shadowing him unwittingly even through the veil of their separation.

And so the men she loved were doomed to die in maddening passion for her, over her, for the sake or fault of her. Jajuka, Chesta, Gatti, Miguel. The rest of the fifteen with them, all gone, all dead to keep her wretched existence moving. All that life was wasted on her to beget more pain from other men.

She was like him in another way. He worked his way through the Aston clan, and she worked hers through the Fanels, burrowing deep into their minds like a parasite and siphoning of f their every thought and action as a side-effect of her existence.

Selena hardly noticed, didn't know she did it, but there she was and she was beautiful in her dangerous splendor. She seemed deceptively peaceful in white, wafting on the wind, like something that could be caught and tamed. She seemed harmless when she slept, but this was illusion.

Her sleep was restless, all tossing and turning, always on the brink of alertness to put her partner on edge the whole night through. One careless move and he would wake her. One shift of thigh or arm to more comfortable a position, and she might stir. It was impossible to rest with her nearby for fear.

And so Van Fanel sat up, all night long, watching her grapple with the blankets for supremacy. Her eyes fluttered open when he reached to brush some golden strands of hair from her warm cheek, and, vacantly taking in her surrounds until circumstances were deemed fit, those oceans contained in her gaze receded from his reach.

He kissed her pliant, sleepy mouth, eliciting a half-awake sigh.

With her, the wound of Hitomi closed and faded to a distant, itching scar. Selena was the tide, surrounding and beaching him, submerging and teasing in every movement of her delicate hands and the precision of her deadly grasp. Her substance altered in front of his eyes to suit the situation, cordial and cool with the presence of her brother, and in exact opposition when alone in his arms. She was passionate and demanding and concrete, a seductress, a devil in disguise, a succubus with exactly her own desires and needs in mind and nothing to inhibit her from realizing them.

Selena was the moon, waxing and waning in predictable, eternal, diametric cycle. She was a world unto herself that opened, he knew, only to him for the sake of their linked past and future. With pale hands and face, with pits and crevices, and unexplored regions both physical and of the mind, this lunar girl was adequate competition for the Earth that lurked in the night sky.

"You remind me of your brother," she said.

"Let's go inside," he said, hand on her shoulder, urging her to leave behind whatever thing she remembered of the past to return to now, with him.

She consented.

In the darkened corridor, only the light of a dusk heaven illuminating them, she glowed. There was but a moment to reflect on how beautiful she looked before he was against the sill of a window, hands on either side of the gap to keep from loosing himself completely, their mouths locked before that crevasse. She kissed the way he wished he and Hitomi had, with complete abandon and without shame or modesty.

When she deigned to take a breath, he fell against the sturdy safety of the wall, holding her close, burying his eyes and all senses in her neck, her sweat, her hair. "I love you," he whispered, before she kissed him again.


	6. Usurper

Uh, this is short and could probably be better, but I've taken too much time getting around to writing it as it is. School's started and all, and I have no free time anymore… ;;_;; I promise the next part will be longer and more up to my usual standards.

I realized recently that Merle wasn't in the story. At all. And I need to start rectifying that, since she's such a central character where Van is concerned. So, she makes her belated debut now.

PS: begging me to write faster will make me feel guilty, and I will write faster. ^^;

* * *

She left his room before the sun rose, in the dark, fumbling and stumbling for her clothing lest the dawn catch her by surprise. Selena kissed Van on the forehead, lips moist as the dew and her glowing skin the only aurora he needed in the world. She said nothing as she carefully carried out her task, and the awful, eerie suspicion slithered up his back with cold scales that he had done something wrong.

"I love you," he muttered, hopelessly, dejection settling out of the fluid night prior, firmly lodging upon his soul.

And she said nothing.

He said it again.

Her sigh was the roar of a terrible tornado in his ears, her cry a cyclone inescapable even now, even so many hours after it rang in his ears, inarticulate with the terror that if she said any name at all, the result would cost her the only affection she had. She muddled her letters and sighed words that were safe for any man to hear, hollow of the risk she might break a heart.

And now she sighed another time, and finally replied, "You're lucky I have no one else in this world, Van Fanel. Not like I have you."

If he was not puzzled by the response, then her sad smile and her sweet, solemn kiss were enough to displace him from the realm of any assurance. The question haunted him in a way his nemesis never had, the specter of her overriding Hitomi's, her image replacing hers, her presence overwhelming hers, her shape supplanting hers as a passing wisp in his arms, her voice screaming and gasping and crying out nothing echoing with something sinister just loud enough to drown out every memory of Hitomi's soft assurances and frantic predictions.

He felt used, but at the same time had the guilty insight that Selena shared the sentiment.

In a rare and grudging concession of bafflement, he confided with the passage of a torturous week, "Merle, I don't understand girls."

His friend's curt reply was deceptively simple and condescending: "Buy her something."

Allen had covered that front entirely too thoroughly already for it to do anything but repel Selena. "She's not like that," he murmured helplessly. "She doesn't want anything I can give her."

Merle could only say, annoyed with him but more upset at any girl who would spurn him, "Then she doesn't deserve you."

That wasn't the way Van saw it at all. Selena stood, not far away, dressed in gray and holding her brother's arm, walking like dormant butterfly with the potential to burst from ash into a fiery brilliance at any moment. The energy of her transformations alone far exceeded the tolerance of any normal mortal. The suppression of Dilandau's passion and impulses gave showed her immense, inhuman self-control.

There were two things a being like her could possibly be, and he knew which she was: a goddess or a soldier. 

No, he didn't deserve her.


	7. Until the Sun Rises

Yeah, I…wrote something. This wasn't where I was planning on going with the story back in September, I'll tell you that. But now it's going, and who am I to impede the direction my story takes on? I'm trying to get back into the style of the rest of this piece, but I think it takes about half the chapter to accomplish that…I've been writing so much original stuff lately, all of which is narrated in various styles due to the personalities of the first-person narrators, that I haven't written anything like this in months.

Enjoy.

Comment.

I don't own Escaflowne.

----

It must have rained the day that Folken Lacour de Fanel died, somewhere on the surface of the cold ground on Gaea. There were storm clouds brewing when the Dragon Slayers were destroyed, Selena remembered clearly, and so something in Heaven above must have broken and poured down and out like a river of her grief when Folken's body finally managed to tread where his spirit had fled long before. There was no other explanation, for where else could that sorrow have gone, leaving this hole in her heart, empty, where even despair would be a welcome relief from the monotony of not-feeling and the tedium of not-hurting?

She was different now than she had been before. When Selena was Dilandau and Dilandau was Selena, every little prick she felt as a slash across and through the heart, and every shock was a bolt through her body, animating her like something monstrous and not really alive so that she could accomplish anything. That was why she had loved her gaimelef, the Alseides, more than any human being could ever hope to be loved by anyone, anywhere. When Dilandau, when he was Selena, had been within the confines of that metal beast, able to manipulate the substance and shape of anything she liked according to the fickle dictates of her whim, then, she felt truly alive for the only time she could ever remember. She felt like she was part of something, important, strong, and more than the sum of her mismatched parts.

Now, things were different, and so was she, so she was no longer Dilandau the way that anyone meant by it. There was nothing to be accomplished in this broken, fragile body, because nothing made her feel anymore and she had no motivation to do anything. As soon as the desire to shake and rend the world manifested,  it dimmed and faded away into nothing at all, now. Not-feeling was more tiring than the way she had been before.

Van tired her, too; she was not vengeful and did not purposely intend to either lead him on or, alternately, cause him heartbreak, but it was more than she could motivate herself to do to make him feel good about their relationship to one another. She hadn't the energy to be passionate about anything, and that included Van and the shady memory of his brother, hazy in the forefront of her mind, indefinite but growing more solid, almost tangible, at night.

She kissed Van the way that she wished she and Folken had kissed: passionately, without physical or emotional restraint, amplifying to stark, blinding contrast their vastly irreconcilable natures rather than eliminating them. Selena did not cry in the graveyard, over his stone, but only because she was no longer certain that she possessed the will to generate tears or the ability to feel the sting of salt on her eyes like they were open wounds. Folken, for all of their attachment to one another, brittle and pliant in one instant, simultaneously and continuously, would never have said to Dilandau the words that Van insisted on whispering to Selena, whenever they were alone, accompanied by a feverish kiss.

The girl remained convinced that Van only said the words that seemed most suitable to the situation, and that he did not know what love was. Real love, she knew, was so inexpressible that those words could not encompass it, and because of that, it was useless to try and using them, that little phrase of three distinct segments, was proof in and of itself that the love was not real. She knew about love.

Though it was impossible to say when and how it began, she did know that the desperate longing for Folken that she felt, not even necessarily sexual or romantic in scope, had been that. She relished any contact with him at all, especially their arguments, when she had been able to allow the extent of her fire to show in dazzling display, and he had been able to be his most cold. It was strange that the man made of ice would yield to the boy composed of fire without so much as batting an eye or melting, certainly not expanding or contracting in any capacity of length or breadth, when the lightest breeze might completely eradicate Dilandau or, depending, fan him into a raging inferno.

The frantic kisses exchanged between Selena and Van were not that kind of love. They were too much alike and not complementary enough for that, in her opinion. And yet, with that first kiss she'd given him, by Folken's grave, she found herself unable to stop.

Selena was tormenting the king, she knew, coming to him at night and keeping him from the rest that he desperately required, accepting his caresses and succumbing to the inarticulate murmurs that he raised, one by one, along the ridges of her spine, and in the morning leaving without a word of thanks or encouragement. When he tried to speak to her during the daytime, she spurned, ignored, or simply disregarded him. And later, all conversation was forfeit to that uncontrollable desire to kiss him and hold him close and never let him go.

Until the sun rose, when she did.


End file.
